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On health care, it is clear that Obama’s team is more concerned with a victory — one his team expects by the end of the year — than with the programmatic details. On national security, he so far has offered far more continuity with George W. Bush on Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies than many of his most ardent supporters were expecting.

When it comes to politics, Obama and his team have proved more comfortable navigating within the Washington system that greeted them than with changing the culture of the capital. A West Wing that features skilled operatives like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs is no less politically obsessed than when Karl Rove roamed the same halls.

“I suppose what has surprised me most is how quickly the promises of comity, outreach and post-partisanship were abandoned,” James G. Gimpel, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, said on the Arena forum. “But maybe that’s because I was starting to believe the hype, and I should have maintained an appropriately skeptical stance all along. In this last year, we have again been reminded that governing is not campaigning.”

The logic of this approach is clear but also plainly at odds with Obama’s stated desire to unify Americans and drain politics of its anger and addiction to unproductive conflict.

In the year since Election Day, there is scant evidence that Obama remains a movement politician.

The legions of activists and volunteers — the people whose e-mail lists and social-networking skills were supposed to be a potent weapon in Obama’s arsenal during legislative battles — have not made themselves felt in meaningful ways since last year.

And what looked like a transformative result -- an electoral map redrawn by Obama’s ability to mobilize both the Democratic base and post-partisan independents -- now seems more tentative. In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in 44 years, based on massive turnout from African-Americans and big support from independents. In 2009, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate was routed in Virginia, largely because of lower African-American turnout and a flight of independents toward the Republican. If these trends are repeated nationally in 2010 and Democrats lose significant ground, Obama’s ambitions to be a transformational president most likely will be put on pause. Instead, he’ll be forced to practice a more defensive brand of politics, much like Bill Clinton was after his party was routed in 1994.

In terms of the culture of Washington, he has made it a bit harder for lobbyists to land government jobs (though there have been plenty of exceptions granted to lobbyists Obama happened to especially want). Yet few people in Washington still regard Obama — clearly at ease with establishment values and personalities — as a dangerous boat rocker. The capital remains a bull market for special-interest deal making. The pharmaceutical lobby, for instance, found Obama eager to do business in which drug makers’ interests were protected in exchange for backing health care reform.

This let’s-make-a-deal impulse isn’t pretty to watch sometimes, especially for Obama’s more idealistic followers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t pay off in the end. Obama stands a good chance of passing a health reform bill in coming months, a significant win for the president even if Congress passes only a watered-down version of the bill.

“‘Well, why haven’t you solved world hunger yet?’” Obama said in New Orleans the other day, mimicking the cries of critics. “‘Why — it’s been nine months. Why?’ You know? I never said it was going to be easy. What did I say during the campaign? I said change is hard. And big change is harder. And after the last nine months, you know I wasn’t kidding.”

What you said during your campaign was no more pork! no more lobbyists!! troops out of Iraq in 16 months!! etc etc need I go on??? I agree that change is hard especially with a Egomaniac-Messiah-Complex, devisive dolt at the helm.

Obama was the preacher and the voters bought his sermon. Now we're just waiting to see if he comes from the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker School of Evangelism ... conning people out of their money for donations and never practicing what they preach.

That hateful reverend of his, the one who's Institution Obama sat in for 20 years, where the Obamas got married, that hateful reverend is on video from Sept. 17, 2009 praising Marxism. I know, I knnow, Obama never heard of any of those hateful things.

We who knew better than to vote for the Marxist-in-Chief knew it before the election when he told an innocent American that spreading the wealth is good for everybody.

WE THE PEOPLE don't like Marxist ideology (excluding the wacked out liberals and left-wing zealots who care only for themselves) and we are going to toss out the rest of the Marxists who someone were voted in to make unconstitutional laws to fulfill their twisted agendas.

It is this very question that started the labeling of those who question Barack Obama and his non-record as a racist, hater, bigot. Who is Barack Obama? What does he bring to the table besides an eloquent speech reading tongue.

It is this very question that started the labeling of those who question Barack Obama and his non-record as a racist, hater, bigot. Who is Barack Obama? What does he bring to the table besides an eloquent speech reading tongue.

You are still not getting it. While you watch and listen to the bamster and marvel, and sigh, and bemoan the fact that he is not a movement politician, Axelrod and Pelosi and Reid have grabbed your underwear and pulled it over your head.

The movement is Marxism, Jack and it's at our doorstep. I can sound the alarm but media must!

I'm amazed by those that infer that Obama should have taken on more. He assumed control of TARP, bought General Motors, raised the $700B stimulus in 3 days, passed a $700B budget, took on health care and kicked off the discussion on cap and trade... and then there are two wars and the probes by the DOJ.

While the far left of the Democratic Party grouse that they wanted more, the conservatives are on fire thinking he's a madman that is on the verge of destroying the country. Obama is not the unifier he billed himself at all, and his programs are far from moderate. To many, Obama's political shrewdness and course reversals look like outright distortions, all the more so when revisiting the election tapes. It's a soundbite nightmare that will surely haunt him when the next elections come round. What ever happened to Afghanistan, the 'good war', the public option that was 'too extreme'; what about 'no new taxes' and a health bill negotiations you could 'watch on CSPAN'.

If the recent elections tell us anything, this president may need to do some real callibration if he intends to survive the upcoming midterms.

"You lie" should have been shouted out a long time ago. nobama's whole presidency has been a lie. There has been no change, just more bitter partisanship. The USA is not a socialist state and we don't want the Euro-elite BS that pelosi is attempting to hand out.

What will be remembered about nobama's presidency will be that he was not prepared for the job, abducated all power to pelosi and emanuel and he campaigned constantly. He is a weak leader.

This is only the beginning. America has had it with Obama, the liar. Never in all our history has a president fallen so far and so fast out of grace as you. Wait for 2010 when we take our country back and remove the street thugs in the WH. Oh you'll be remembered Obama, not as the messiah you liked to portray yourself as but as the demon you are right out of the pits of hell.